10.09.2010

Run Away!

I know I'll be exposing myself to endless ridicule here but District 13: Ultimatum is the best action film I've seen this year. Period.

Yes, it's corny. Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's outlandish and goofy. No, it's not a great piece of art..... I'll grant you all those things right up front, but what I will say is this; D13U is a nearly perfect antidote to the things Hollywood action filmmakers have been getting wrong for the past decade. It has a decidedly French flavour and even sports a little politics on its sleeve... when the action slows down enough to care. The bad corporation at the heart of movie is named Harriburton...so, as you can see, subtlety isn't a strong suit here. There's a Le Pen bad guy that runs a shadow government agency named DISS with aims to clear some D13 territory for new development. There's a decent man in the President's chair, but he's surrounded by a nest of vipers. The good guys are blanc and the bad guys are noir and ….none of that really matters.

As most will know, D13U is the sequel to District 13, the 2004 Luc Besson written-and-produced French film that introduced parkour to international audiences. Parkour, the free-running “art of flight” technique that has people leaping through the air from rooftop to rooftop and rolling out to minimize broken ankles and crushed vertebrae, made an unmistakable mark on films like Casino Royale and The Bourne Ultimatum, qualifying it as one of the decade's most influential action movies. I also love the fact that it's basically the martial art of running away. Now that's my kind of fighting style....

I'll skip trying to make any sense of the sequel's plot because it mostly doesn't. Bad guys want to nuke a walled ghetto on the outskirts of Paris. Good guys align to stop them. That's really all you need to know going in... or coming out for that matter. What is fascinating, however, is just bloody cool the overall vibe of the movie is. The score is a terrific collision of French, Arab and African hip hop that dovetails nicely with the immigrant gangs ...Gypsy, Asian, Arab, Skinhead and African...that run things in District 13. French Supercop Damian Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) teams up again with buddy and D13 denizen Leïto (parkour progenitor David Belle) to convince the gang leaders to join forces to stop the capitalist pigs.... and nothing gets the old Gaelic blood flowing quite like an old-fashioned neo-con cookup.

D13U is two parts Escape from New York, one part Ong Bak, ten parts D13 (after all, it is a sequel) with a sprinkle of Le Haine for political good measure.. When it's firing on all cylinders, it's a bad-ass action film that doesn't take itself too seriously. The camera work and editing is that annoying sped-up/slowed-down style from the action-films-for-dummies school of cinematography, but it somehow works here. It helps that the film runs at just over 100 minutes... although truth be told, it could easily have been cut to 90 minutes (or 30 minutes for that matter). There are enough cliches floating around to make a dozen movies and it's a bit of a shame that Besson and director Patrick Allessandrin couldn't find more important roles for the excellent non-Caucasian actors that pepper this movie. Any number of these supporting players could have been written bigger parts and the fact that they're relegated to margins, blunts the film's aspirations to inclusiveness. Minor quibbles though, because I thoroughly enjoyed it.

On a final note, D13U's R-rating seems a little inappropriate given the fact that it's essentially an anti-gun movie. Leïto and Tomaso glide, jump and bounce around the ghetto mostly relying on their wits and sheer physical prowess to move around freely in the lock-down police state of D13. Notwithstanding the many ass-kickings on display here, the use of a gun represents distinctly unsportsmanlike conduct and signals weakness or evil intentions, a welcome respite from the dreary and endless gun battles at the centre of most PG-rated Hollywood action flicks these days.

Winner.... and I now love French hip hop, especially Alonzo. He can really bust a groove.

6 comments:

a nearly perfect antidote to the things Hollywood action filmmakers have been getting wrong for the past decade.... given the fact that it's essentially an anti-gun movie...

Altho I guess I can see the point trying to be made, I still feel that when you're talking "Hollywood Action Movies" you're going in with an expectation, hell, a burning desire to see maximum carnage and destruction via high-powered weapons a'la "The Expendables". I can't see an anti-gun movie being the claimed "nearly perfect antidote".

And I must admit a review that states "I'll skip trying to make any sense of the sequel's plot because it mostly doesn't" again really doesn't imbue me with a sense of going into D13U with the thought that I'm going to be entertained. 1 you've taken away my guns and 2, it's got no real intelligent storyline. And this is meant to be a "Winner"?

“a nearly perfect antidote to the things Hollywood action filmmakers have been getting wrong for the past decade.... given the fact that it's essentially an anti-gun movie...”

….you did.

In my post those two statements are 5 paragraphs and 300 words apart....They're taken out of context. The antidote part related to the film having some Euro/French sensibilities that differ from the direction Hollywood action films have gone of late ie: maximum carnage – and the anti-gun movie in the last paragraph speaks to the questionable R-rating it got slapped with in the U.S. I also didn't say it didn't have guns, but that it was an anti-gun film. There's plenty of guns – it's just the weak that resort to using them.

The plot is convoluted to be sure and it's probably not all that intelligent either – so you have me there. There are plot holes you could drive a car through (and they do) but again, to me the script's inconsistencies were no worse than most modern action films. What it had was style, vision, good acting and great stunts... what it wasn't was Cop Out, Gamer, Wanted, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen or Spiderman 3.

I think I hedged my comments about the film well-enough and its qualified Winner status stands for the reasons I gave. You don't have to watch it, I'm just glad I did.

Can't wait to give this one a go. Feel ashamed, as if i was too scared to try it out until someone else said something about it. I was a huge fan of the first film and when we got this one in the shop i found the lack of fanfare around the release discouraging. Good to hear it's still a shit load of fun.

Well I can't argue with you on the point of the Euro/ French films having a few more sensibilities over Hollywood, and in no way did I mean to come across as totally in support of the muck that gets dealt out from big name giants in the US. Quite a number of my favourite horror films of 2009/10 have come out of Europe (France in particular) and I enjoy them not solely for the gore 'n' guts as much as the storyline & plot twists (Haute Tension and Martyrs instantly come to mind).

I haven't seen D13U yet, but I did watch D13 and totally enjoyed it. As such, I am going totally off The Film Buff Blog review as far as my previous comment goes. I guess the "I'll skip trying to make any sense of the sequel's plot because it mostly doesn't" comment in the review was the driving point behind my angle.

I'll just have to watch the film to make an accurate judgement as to it being a "Winner" or not.

Expendables I saw in the cinema, and it is purely 100% no-brainer action flick from word Go. Leave any love for storyline or dialogue at the front door. It's guns, big guns, grunts, and headshots. I think it needed more subtitles for the English speaking actors than the Spanish speaking ones. Consider yourself warned. ;)

Stoney - I think I likely overstated the "no plot" thing and you're probably right to point that out.

The French hip hop comment is a bit of an inside joke - I'm the really old guy around here and hate most music/people made after 1990. The staff at our main store have a "scott-friendly" playlist that includes nothing recorded after Big Bill Broonzy died in 1958. They slip it on when I'm around so I won't bitch about the music they normally play.

Quite frankly, I'm the least likely person in the world to listen to French hip hop.

btw - loved the top 5 cult films of the '70s from your blog post a while back. Stellar picks all.